The End of the Uchiha
by RowlettLesbian
Summary: "I promise, little electric spirit of this shrine," he whispered into the soft dirt and fallen leaves, "I will never gain the eyes. I will never pass them on. And I will make sure the eyes end in my brother, so that they can't hurt anybody anymore. I will be the last Uchiha, and see to the end of the Copy-Wheel Clan. Then all of the hatred here can stop, and my family can rest."
1. One Brother

Sasuke sat on his front stoop. He was hunched over with horrible posture, resting his chin in his palms with his elbows balanced on his knees. He was still wearing a hospital gown. There hadn't been anybody to bring him clothes at the hospital so he'd walked home in them.

There wasn't anybody.

"Why?" he whispered out into the empty, blood-spattered compound. Only the wind answered him. Sasuke closed his eyes shut as tight as possible and tried to imagine that the wind was voices, that Kaa-chan would open the door and call him for dinner at any moment. Then, the wind settled and he smelled the antiseptic that the ANBU apparently used. He hadn't known the smell before now, but he bet he'd never forget after this. Sasuke opened his eyes and sat up.

The walls of the buildings in the compound were browned in splatters from every angle. Half of the pathways had been dug up or burned somehow. He'd had trouble recognizing the way home. Somehow, even though Kaa-chan's garden hadn't survived, the tiny blue forget-me-nots in the ditch were clinging to life, unperturbed. Sasuke stood up. He was barefoot, and his feet were dirty. He'd ditched the hospital slippers in some dumpster on the way to the compound. The grasses and weeds were ticklish against his instep. He kept his eyes on his feet as he walked, on the dirt covering his toes. Rather than stepping on the dirt and stone paths that were half-gone, he hopped from patch of grass to patch of weeds to patch of different grasses. Each step had to be measured to keep from crushing any of the flowers.

The ditch was about as tall as him, with a slope that he wouldn't call gentle, but also wasn't a straight drop either. Kaa-chan hadn't ever let him play down here. Sasuke slid down the side of the ditch and skidded to a stop in a patch of forget-me-nots as tall as his knees. Almost all of them were blue like a robin's egg, but on each bush was one or two buds, not even so large as his littlest pinky nail, that blushed pink in the setting sun.

Sasuke looked up along the path of the ditch. It followed up the hill, with motionless brown puddles bundled along the larger dips. The ditch meandered out of sight at the top of the hill at the very back of the Uchiha grounds.

The first step he took startled him. He hadn't realized he was going to walk up the ditch, and the splash of old water was cold and loud in the emptiness of the…his…

Sasuke walked. He walked as the sun went orange and then red and then purple. He walked as the sky went black and torches were lit in the distance of Konoha. He walked as the stars came out overhead. He'd never been able to see them so well. Nii-san had always said that the stars hid from the lights of human-kind. Now his home was dark and the stars weren't hiding from him.

The moon was well in the sky by the time he crested the hill, soaked and shivering. Here on the very edges of the Uchiha land he was confused to find a tiny little shrine set against the base of an unremarkable tree. On the branches of this shrine tree, this single tree indistinguishable from any other in the Konoha woods, hung a tiny red paper-lantern with the Uchiha fan painted on it. He had no idea how it could be lit. He glared out at the surrounding woods as he rushed over to the shrine, half expecting someone with a box of matches to leap out, until he got a closer look at the shrine and stumbled to a stop. The stones of the shrine were stacked to look like a little house, and from the back 'doorway' a tiny wire climbed up the tree like a vine until it reached the lantern.

Sasuke brought himself to two steps from the shrine and bowed at the waist. Then he walked forward and touched a finger to the wire. It pinched him! He jerked his finger back and stuck it in his mouth. Maybe 'pinched' wasn't the right word, it also nearly burned…shocked! It shocked him, like when you roll around on a rug and then touch a doorknob but worse.

The lantern used the lightning from the shrine to stay lit without any of the Uchiha needing to bring a flame all the way over the hill. No one had been here to light the lantern after all.

Sasuke sat down heavily in front of the shrine. This little stone house and paper lantern, with its electric wire and tiny light, had outlived his family by weeks.

Sasuke stared at the tiny stone house and dug his fingers into the mulch of dead leaves. If the shrine used flame, it would be dead by now. His family had been like that. They burned, passionate and short-lived, bright and sharp. Now they were extinguished. Sasuke felt scorched along his edges, from that hottest flame of them all. Nii-san wanted him to set himself aflame, get the eyes and become stronger, the new hottest flame of the noble Uchiha just so that he could have a challenge. He wanted Sasuke's life to be consumed in those flames he'd used to murder Kaa-chan and Tou-san. Sasuke's hands were getting wet, drip by drip, as they clenched in the dirt beneath his face. His eyes felt watery and cool. It was the first soothing touch he'd known in weeks.

Tou-san had said that he'd know his Sharingan had come because it would burn. That he'd kill someone, feel scared and angry and other horrible in-between things, and then his eyes would burn and he'd see how to kill them. Nii-san had refused to talk about it at all. His Nii-san cared more about his brilliant eyes than their family.

Maybe, the Uchihas eyes burned something out of them, something kind. Or maybe it burned something into them, something that made them hateful enough inside to murder every child Sasuke had ever played with.

He'd always been jealous of the kids who got to play in the ditch. Little girls with black eyes beaming and tossing off their shoes to pick dandelions, little boys just like Sasuke throwing pebbles into puddles. When Sasuke had come along, they'd always shout for him to come join them, but he'd scoffed at them. He'd been disdainful at the thought of playing silly games when he could be learning how to be a Shinobi like his Nii-san, the best ninja in Konoha. None of those kids had gained the eyes. All of their parents, the ones who would only nod at him with stony faces, they had the eyes.

Sasuke knelt before the shrine and touched his forehead to the ground. Everything was so freezing cold. He'd need to go back soon. He'd have to dry off, and find clean clothes, and get into his un-made bed in his blood-stained house. Before he left, though, he had time for one thing yet.

"I promise, little electric spirit of this shrine," he whispered into the soft dirt and fallen leaves, "I will never gain the eyes. I will never pass them on. And I will make sure the eyes end in my brother, so that they can't hurt anybody anymore. I will be the last Uchiha, and see to the end of the Copy-Wheel Clan. Then all of the hatred here can stop, and my family can rest peacefully. I promise, little shrine."

Sasuke looked up from the ground. Nothing had changed. The lantern still glowed, the shrine still sat, and the tree still stood. Everything felt different, though. Sasuke looked over his surroundings once, twice, three times trying to find what was different. The world felt like it should have warped, somehow, around the promise he'd made. Then, his eyes returned to the little glowing lantern and he relaxed. The lantern made everything make sense. This little shrine over the hill hadn't changed at all. It was him. He felt lighter, and warmer. Like that static wire was feeding him with light as well.

Sasuke stood up and took two steps back. He bowed respectfully, and thanked the little shrine with the oldest, fanciest-sounding words he knew. Then he turned and started walking back up over the hill to his home.

The grassy slope was black in the night-time world. He kept stumbling over unseen sticks and rocks and divots. For some reason, despite being physically fit, his breath was coming in harsh pants as he shoved himself step over step up the hill to the ruins of his childhood home. In Uchiha tradition, mourning meant burning things. Sasuke, though, didn't think he could stand the thought of fire anymore. If he was the only one left to put the Uchiha to rest, then he refused to set them aflame to do so, as they had burned in life. They were supposed to be sleeping.

Maybe, if he left all of the doors and windows open, then little weeds and flowers would grow from the bloodstains in the wooden floor. Dead leaves would float in, and the barn cat might move into one of the cupboards near the refrigerator where it'd be warm. It would be kind of like burying his family, like some other clans did. The village had dealt with the corpses of his family. He didn't know what had happened to them beyond that they'd been burned. Hokage-sama had made careful pains to emphasize that the eyes had been burned as well.

Sasuke crested the hill and looked down on the pool of black which his moonlight-silver houses were floating upon. They looked like ghosts. His first thought was to hate that they looked like this, but then he felt how the hatred burned deep in his chest and swallowed a mouthful of foul spit with a tremulous grimace. Anything was better than hatred, than the hatred that killed his Clan. So, Sasuke threw himself down the hill. He rolled, wincing and pushing himself on as bits of wood and stone dug into his back and stomach. He somersaulted, twisted, and the momentum of his fall sent him down to the bottom of the hill in less than half a minute. He let himself go floppy as he slowed to a stop and ended up face down in the dust of a path at the edge of the property.

Slowly, he pushed himself upright and yanked his hospital slip back down over his thighs. It felt very grimy, by now, but he didn't care. Feeling cold and dizzy was so much better than burning inside. He stood up on wobbly legs and looked around him. It was hard to tell in the dark, but he seemed to be down the street from his house, near the home of a family he'd only known in passing. There had been an older couple with a shinobi chunin daughter. He'd never been to their home. He wondered if their daughter had tried to protect them, what jutsu she'd tried to use as Nii-san cut her down. Whether she'd watched her parents die or if they'd watched her die.

Their home where they'd died belonged to Sasuke now. It was his responsibility to help their ghosts forget the harsh flames of his brother, that burned them until they were gone.

So Sasuke decided to take advantage of his newfound warmth and lightness. He walked around the house and opened up the simple wooden front door, propping it open with a stone from the garden. They had been growing lavender. Maybe one of them liked to make tea. He walked inside the cold, empty home with only he and his breath breaking the strange silence. His dirty bare feet made pitter-pats against the wood and rusted-blood. He decided to walk upstairs first. The staircase was rickety, and little drips of blood had dried when they ran down the staircase like the puddles from the ditch had when Sasuke had stepped in them. Sasuke ignored the furniture, the unmade beds, the papers and toothbrushes as he went through the top floor and opened every single window as wide as it would go. The stars looked even brighter, even closer without the smudged, smeared glass in the way.

Downstairs, Sasuke did the same thing and more. He opened every window, propped open every door, and also plugged the sink. When it rained, the water might blow in through the window in the kitchen and fill up the sink with a bit of fresh rain water. Then the birds would have a place to bathe.

Sasuke walked back out of the house feeling a little bit lighter than he had before he'd gone inside. He turned back to look at the building he'd never gone into before. The Uchiha fan was painted on the side, slightly smeared with a bloody handprint. Somehow, Sasuke thought, with the windows open and dead leaves already blowing through the threshold, it was easier to imagine the years from now that would wear away the paint and the pain smeared on it. Someday there would be no sign it had been here at all.

Sasuke opened every single house he passed on his way home. It was barely half a dozen, and he knew there were dozens more to fix in the morning. However, when he came upon his own house his eyes drifted into blurs momentarily as he yawned so long he felt his jaw crack. It was time to be finished for the evening. No more burning with determination for him, not ever.

On his way to bed, Sasuke opened every window in the house. He opened the window in Kaa-chan's kitchen, the one in Tou-san's study, even the one in their bedroom.

He left Nii-san's bedroom door shut.

Then he was back in his old room. His academy homework from that day was still on his desk, half-finished. His bed covers were rumpled up around the foot of his mattress. His dirty clothes were in the little basket behind the door. It was like nothing had even happened. He was the only different thing in the room.

Sasuke did not look at the mirror as he peeled off the soaked-through slip of a hospital gown. It was covered in dirt stains and grass stains, half see-through with damp. He dropped it into the basket with his dirty clothes. It smelled like dirt, and grass, and puddles. Like growing things, fresh and dirty and healthy. His pajamas were laid on his pillow in a crumpled lump from where he'd thrown them weeks ago. He picked up his sleep romper and shook it harshly over his floor. A tiny black spider fell out and scuttled away under his desk. Sasuke watched it run with an odd pang of sympathy. It probably thought Sasuke was going to kill it, just because he could. A lot of things probably thought that, someday, he'd kill things just to test if he could, gain power and take lives with red eyes and a hateful expression. Like a monster.

Little girls were scared of spiders. Standing in his dark bedroom, putting one foot after another into his black cotton romper with the Uchiha fan embroidered on the left chest pocket, Sasuke thought that it'd be nice if someday spiders weren't scared at him, because they'd know that he was better than the Uchiha before him. That he wasn't a monster. And that he didn't think they were monsters either.

Sasuke knew monsters.

Tonight he knew he'd dream of one. And it would call him 'Little Brother'.


	2. Two Eyes

The Konoha orphanage was a place he had only seen once. Kaa-chan had been holding his hand, walking him a different way to somewhere he couldn't remember around some sort of construction. He couldn't remember much from that day, but he did remember the two handsome men speaking to an old lady and holding hands, one each, with a young boy who was looking at them like they were stars fallen from the heavens.

"Kaa-chan?" he'd asked, "what's tha'?"

Kaa-chan had looked and smiled briefly before looking down to him with a smile. "Those two men are in love, Sasuke, just like Kaa-chan and Tou-chan are in love. But since two men can't have babies like a man and a woman can, they go to the orphanage to get a baby instead."

Younger Sasuke had been amazingly jealous. He didn't like girls at all, but boys were pretty cute. Also they got to get babies from an orphanage instead of from one of their bellies. He wished he didn't have to marry a girl so that he could get an orphanage baby instead.

Now, Sasuke had realized that having a baby like his parents was no longer an option for him, not if he wanted to end the Uchiha line. He really wanted kids though, which meant he'd need to adopt someday. And to do that he'd need a husband.

'Well,' thought Sasuke, 'I guess I'll just have to be gay, now. Now that I think about it, it will be nice to like boys instead of girls. Girls are pretty annoying anyways, and boys are really very cute. I wonder why everybody doesn't choose to be gay, it seems way better than forcing yourself to like the opposite gender.'

* * *

Sasuke slammed down into the chair before the clerk's desk. Said clerk jerked violently and glared at Sasuke before a moment of shock passed through her eyes and she quickly began to smile instead.

"Uchiha-san! What can I do for you today?" she chirped.

Sasuke crossed his arms and leaned back so that his bangs would fall over his eyes. "Need to change my will."

The desk clerk's eyebrows went up. "Your Last Will and Testament? But the Uchiha- oh. Oh, yes, I see." The clerk began rummaging through a series of drawers, each one causing her to glance up at Sasuke with a grimace and rummage faster. Finally she slapped a thick folder onto the table along with a pen. "So, as I'm sure you know your brother, as a missing-nin, does not qualify as a beneficiary in any sense under Konoha law, and that includes the Clan manifesto. Normally you wouldn't be able to make any alterations to this but, well, um…" The clerk twiddled the pen and shifted her eyes rapidly away from Sasuke's unchanged expression. "So what did you have in mind, Uchiha-san?"

Sasuke leaned forward and uncrossed his arms, putting his hands on the edge of the clerk's desk. "Funerary conditions." With that, he pulled out a slip of paper and slid it across the desk to her. She quickly unfolded it.

"Coordinates?" she asked.

"Hn," Sasuke replied, "where I'm to be buried."

The clerk nodded. "Ah! I see. A final resting plate for your ashes."

"No," Sasuke snarled, "for my body. No cremation will occur." The clerk paled.

"U-uchiha-san, Konoha-nin with doujutsu are prohibited from-"

"I don't have my doujutsu. Once I have it, then you can cremate me." Sasuke glared at the clerk who was now leaning away from her own desk with trembling shoulders.

"I-I suppose that's technically allowed, but surely-"

"These are Clan matters. Shall I take this to the Hokage?" Sasuke raised an eyebrow.

"Right!" she scrambled to make the note within the folder. "Was there anything else I could do for you, Uchiha-sama?" Sasuke smirked a little and leaned back.

"I'm leaving everything to the Konoha orphanage. Even the land and houses."

The clerk could not manage even a thin veneer over her hilariously gaping maw. Her eyes were bugging out so far Sasuke half suspected she had the doujutsu rather than him. The woman mutely nodded and bent over to make another note. As soon as her pen left the paper Sasuke snatched up the whole thing and looked over her alterations. They looked…fine? Sasuke wasn't exactly trained in this sort of thing but they looked official and were worded right, if worded fancy. He nodded with a blank expression and let no doubt show as he handed back the folder. The clerk beamed and her shoulders relaxed.

"I'm so glad to have been of ser-" Sasuke stood up from his seat, which screeched against the wood, and marched out the door without a backwards glance. He really did hate bureaucracy.

* * *

It was time.

Three years after that day. Less than a year until Graduation. And he was actually ready. He could finally move towards his goal.

Sasuke ran through the compound after he'd finally finished at the academy for the day. This was nothing new. He spent every possible moment at home, working and training and working some more. Today, though, he ran with a bit more excitement, a bit more hope. Every step was bringing him closer to his goal, and Sasuke was no slouch when it came to taking steps. He threw himself around each corner, sometimes skidding in the dust before he'd right himself and launch himself forward again.

The Uchiha compound had changed so much in the past three years. The houses he'd left open were all rotting, filled with growing shrubbery and claimed by various squirrels. It wasn't much, but it brought sound and life to the compound. Every leaf that settled on the old floorboards and slowly faded into dirt was like a little more dirt to cover his clan's graves.

He'd gone through and grabbed things from various houses over the years. Warm blankets, clocks, books and paintings. He used his parents old bedroom for most of it, except for a select few books and his very, very large collection of batteries.

Hope felt like static electricity at Sasuke's fingertips. It felt like potential, like joy and danger all at once. It felt like the little shrine that Sasuke worshiped. That's why he collected so many batteries. Every time we went to pay his respects, or nap, or…cry, he'd check on the glow of the red electric lantern and replace the battery if it so much as dimmed. The tree had grown over the years, with branches vast enough to protect the flimsy lantern from the worst of various storms.

Sasuke reached his home and yanked open the front door to hurry inside. Years ago, he would have hated being so disrespectful of the place his parents had died. The house for that first few weeks had been more of a mausoleum than a home. Then, Sasuke had gone ahead and ripped out the walls on the ground floor. He left the support beams, he just got rid of the wall bits. After that something had clicked in his head and his childhood home had very much become his own vision.

As usual, Sasuke walked into his home and yelled out into the mess. "I'm home!" he called. Pazu immediately ran out from her favorite nook next to the sunny window and came up to him, meowing and purring as she rubbed herself over his legs. Sasuke smiled and knelt down to greet her properly. He stuck his face in front of hers and let her rub their cheeks together while scritching her all up and down her spine. Her little purrs hitched with chirrups. As soon as he stood up she ran off, ready to do whatever it is cats do. Sasuke had never once managed to 'tail' her (ha!) during her afternoon business.

He ditched his school bag next to the front door, but left his outside shoes on. He didn't take them off unless he was in his bedroom, not with all of the junk accumulated on the ground floor that could stab his feet.

His workshop was his favorite place in the world. It looked nothing like the normal family home it had used to be. In large part, that was because Sasuke had filled the now wall-less space with scrap metal and rocks. He collected metals in all forms. It was hard, since so many of the rocks and metals were very impure, but he tried to keep things vaguely separated by ferromagnetic, ferri-magnetic, paramagnetic, diamagnetic, and anti-ferromagnetic. Then there was the forge.

He'd originally made it himself out of stuff he'd dug out around the Uchiha compound, then once he'd completed it he'd realized that having an indoor forge where he lived was a very bad idea. He'd realized this when he lit it for the first time and got smoked out of his own house. So he'd opened up the wall next to it and sort of cordoned it off. It meant his workshop was a bit more exposed to the elements than he'd like over there, but he'd gotten good enough at building that the rest of the ground floor was still fairly indoors while the forge was fairly outdoors. It was an invaluable tool for him. Being able to melt down metals and mess with them had taught him more about electricity than anything else. It was an ugly little thing, brown and squat and misshaped on one side, but it worked perfectly. There was even a little metal hook that he'd made on the wall next to it where he hung his face-shield and heavy mittens.

His regular indoor-goggles and gloves were more nomadic. They usually ended up on the last counter he worked at before bed time, but sometimes they got hung from things, shoved to the floor, tossed into piles, or flat out worn to bed. Once he'd spent an entire weekend looking for them and using his spare set only to find he'd been using them as a headband.

Sasuke heaved a sigh of relief and slumped over towards his desk, the cozy, fluffy-pillow lined nest where he could sit and read and write and plan. It was so warm he probably slept there more often than he slept upstairs. He'd found a few kotatsus in the neighboring houses and torn them apart to create a sort of oven of kotatsus lined with every fleece fabric he could find. Such luxury was unbefitting of an Uchiha going into Shinobi work, especially one from the main house. So of course, Sasuke devoted himself to enjoying it. In his worse moments he wondered if Itachi would have become so rotten inside if he'd just gotten some nice pillows and a heated table. Then he'd try very hard not to cry by going and melting something and then electrifying it. Or vice versa. Many of Sasuke's days ended up going similarly. Think something horrible, cry, then work himself into exhaustion so that he could sleep. A recipe for success, given his status as top of his class.

Gingerly, Sasuke stepped over a weird spiky thing he must have made during one of his late-night magnetic field experiments. Magnets were terrifyingly unpredictable but also so predictable it was beautiful. And then you added in electromagnetism and everything went weird. Thus the naturally spiky metal ball. Leaning against a support beam was some silver metal he'd taken from a house a few blocks away. It was in the form of a mirror, currently. He couldn't avoid his own reflection as he climbed up the step to the kitchen where his nest was built.

He looked…fine. His eyes were flinty and glaring, his hair was spiky and black, his skin was clean-ish and pale. He looked like any other Uchiha. Every day he wore a black sleeveless top with a high neck and the Uchiha fan on the back. Everything he owned had the fan on it. Still, they were Shinobi grade so it was fine. His black pants with lots of pockets were also fine. What he really liked was the black civilian hoodie he'd bought two years ago. It was so soft and big, it was like wearing a blanket everywhere. In class he could put up his hood and avoid eye contact with almost all of the mean girls who yelled at him and made fun of him all the time. He wasn't sure why they blinked at him so much and brought him food and laughed at him until they turned red, but he figured they just thought he was a bit of a nerd. Which was true. They were always talking about how Sasuke was at the top of the class and how pretty he looked and how good he was at fighting. The blonde and pink ones wouldn't even let anyone sit by him or talk to him, they were so disgusted by him. Still, he wasn't going to the academy to make friends. The girls were annoying at worst, and hopefully soon they'd grow out of picking on him.

Sasuke turned away from the mirror and sighed. He clenched his fists and tried to ignore all of the petty worries and quirks flickering through the front of his mind. He couldn't get sucked into his comfy little nest or his comfy hoodie or his comfy life at the academy or even his comfy workshop with Pazu. Instead, he grabbed his experiment notes and walked to the metal chair in the only clean space in his workshop.

The chair was the center of his procedure, but ultimately irrelevant. He would sit there, but the real magic was behind the chair along the edge of the wall. He ran a finger along the armrest before kneeling down to check the lever. The trigger lever was connected to five wires, four hanging loose and one crawling along the floor. He checked the floor wire's connection to the lever, then followed it to the wall, to the set of batteries he'd built himself. Each one was nearly as big as he was, and would not conduct electricity to the four hanging wires until the lever was thrown.

See, Sasuke had been reading about chakra pathways three years ago, searching for a way to get rid of his doujutsu. Chakra had a lot in common with electricity. And the pathways, they were a lot like wires. Yet, the book had warned, Shinobi attempting lightning jutsu should be careful not to convert their own chakra into lightning chakra until it was at the fingertips, or else risk burning out the chakra pathways altogether.

So Sasuke had done some calculations. Shinobi who had died due to overloading with lightning chakra had all done so with the exact same voltage, although he'd apparently been the first one to calculate that. So, he'd wondered, would a lesser voltage injected into opened chakra points burn out the pathways without burning out the whole Shinobi? Like, say, just the pathways that fueled a doujutsu?

He couldn't be sure, not until he'd tried it, but every experiment so far indicated 'yes'. Probably.

So, while he was at it, he'd decided to take care of two birds with one stone. Or rather, four birds. Two eyes, and two…sensitive areas. He didn't want the eyes, but he also didn't want any children with the eyes. So he'd just have to make sure he couldn't have children. Iruka-sensei had explained about how sometimes Shinobi can have babies on missions without wanting to, with enemy shinobi especially. He'd said it happened more often to captured kunoichi but Sasuke wanted to be prepared for anything.

The batteries all looked fine, and Sasuke was as ready as he was going to get. It was a sobering thought. There was no time to be scared or doubtful, not when he had a promise to keep. His eyes could come in at any moment, and if they did then all of his planning would be useless. He shook slightly, but took off his shoes and shirt anyways. His pants followed, and then his underwear. Nudity was never something he'd get used to, but any fabric could easily get in the way of the wires and ruin his procedure.

Sasuke sat down in the procedure chair and tried desperately not to shiver. Between the cold and his fear, his body was not obeying. Just like always his traitorous body kept trying to cling on to control, but after today the two biggest dangers of his flesh would be gone. Forever.

Sasuke grabbed the set of four wires, two labeled with red, two with blue. He, using only his fingernails, peeled away a bit of his nearby electrical tape from the roll to use to attach one blue wire to his left testicle. Every hair on his body stood up, and he twitched violently. Even the tape, holding a bit of metal to such a sensitive spot, was painful. Still, what was next would be so, so much worse. He quickly got the second blue wire attached to the other testicle and tried to ignore the pinching. The red wires, he took a moment to stare at as he clenched them in one shaking hand. He'd not once questioned in the past three years what his parents would say if they knew what he was giving up. He grit his teeth and shifted his gaze to the roll of electrical tape. They were dead, so their opinions weren't his biggest priority anymore.

He remembered his brother and that night. He remembered that being as unlike Itachi as possible would be the best thing for everyone. Especially the dead.

Sasuke took one wire at a time and taped them ever so carefully at the inner corner of each eye. His eyes watered so badly he worried for a moment that the tape on each side of the bridge of his nose would fail. His eyelids fluttered against his control, desperately trying to protect the precious Uchiha eyes. Sasuke let them close. The wires were in place and, in defiance of all bodily defenses, they weren't moving.

Sasuke reached out and found the trigger lever with his fingertips. His breaths were coming in short little gasps that vibrated his entire chest. He grasped the trigger with a freezing cold hand and, before his body could wrest back power from his mind, he yanked it back.

The metal tabs out of his sight connected, which Sasuke knew in some dark corner of his mind only because of the pain they triggered which began to obliterate every other thought. The electricity was an all-consuming sensation, a burning, shattering flow centered in his abdomen and his face, but radiating throughout his entire body. On the other side of his eyelids the light was flickering, and all he could hear was a high-pitched scream augmented by a mechanical whine. From the strain on his throat, he was probably the one screaming. He felt like he was being split apart upon every crack in his skin. The electric storm went on for longer than Sasuke could ever have hoped to comprehend, and all Sasuke could think was 'please, please let it stop'.

The pain vanished as quickly as it had come. Behind him, he could hear slight bubbling and a metallic click he'd set to indicate safe completion of the experiment. Sasuke slumped in the chair, panting for breath.

It was several minutes before Sasuke could bring himself to open his eyes. He'd half feared he'd go blind after this stunt, and when he peeled his eyelids open everything was blurry which only fed into his worst-case-scenario terror. Sasuke blinked furiously and reached up with a trembling hand to yank away the red wires, hot tears rolling down his cheeks and allowing his vision to become mercifully clear. As he looked out across his workshop, Sasuke could only gasp.

The room was so colorful. The clarity hadn't changed, and the colors hadn't…changed, per se, but it was like everything was so much more vivid, like the world had been slightly greyed out before this moment. Pazu, sneaking around the corner with flattened ears and a bushy tail, was a blushingly warm orange. His nest was a riot of forget-me-not blues and greens that looked more alive than any tree Sasuke could remember. He suspected a real tree would be even better. This, more than anything else, gave Sasuke hope that his plan had worked.

Sasuke beamed and looked down to pull away the other wires. He snagged them and winced. His thighs were warm against the metal seat, and he could see now that he'd pissed himself. He knew electricity was almost guaranteed to do that, but he'd tried not to drink any water today. The wires he pulled away were a bit damp, and Sasuke stood up out of the puddle probably a bit faster than he should have.

He knew it was a bit too fast because as soon as he stepped away from the chair he blacked out entirely.


	3. Three Classmates

One Week Ago

Academy classes were so boring it was painful. In class that day, they were practicing using sine, cosine, and tangent to calculate the height of a shinobi throwing a kunai at a known angle. Sasuke used harder math to figure out the dimensions of the chair he'd be running electricity into, to say nothing of the math he used to calculate how that electricity would behave. So, Sasuke was doing that math instead of the classroom math. He was using his forearm and hoodie sleeve to hide his notes so that Haruno-san wouldn't notice.

"Ne, Sasuke-kun!" Sasuke's nose crinkled in his hood. She'd noticed. "Why aren't you doing the same stuff as the rest of us? What's that you're writing? Can I see?" Before Sasuke could even shake his head, Haruno-san had grabbed his paper. One of these days, Sasuke would finally have the motivation to stop her, but that would probably involve talking to her. He couldn't think of many things he wanted to do less. "Wow, Sasuke-kun, I don't understand any of this!"

"Give it here, forehead-girl!" screamed Yamanaka-san. She'd leapt onto the desk in the row behind them, standing on top of Nara-san's blank paper. Nara-san was sleeping. Sasuke was blindingly jealous, he never felt comfortable enough to sleep outside of his home. Yamanaka-san grabbed one edge of the paper, but Haruno-san didn't let go. The paper ripped down his folded-in seam.

Haruno-san and Yamanaka-san were shrieking at each other and yanking on each other's hair. Sasuke grabbed the halves of paper off the floor, curling his knees up onto his seat and hunching his shoulders as he sat back up, praying they'd stay focused on each other instead of him. He ducked his head up from under the table and came nose-to-nose with Nara-san.

"Ah. So troublesome, Sasuke-san," whined the Nara. Sasuke scowled reflexively. He stuffed the papers into his left hoodie pocket and tucked himself as far back into his hood as he could manage.

Sasuke managed to go ignored for most of the rest of the day until class sparring time. It was his last class, and he'd be able to spend most of it standing still and staring at various trees and bushes. Naturally, it was his favorite class.

"Teme!"

Sasuke groaned and tugged at his hood, lowering it down to his shoulders. There was no hiding from Naruto. "Hn," he grunted, just in time for the blonde to skid to a stop a few feet in front of him, pointing a finger right into his face.

"Yeah, today's the day I beat your ass into the dirt, Teme! Get ready to lose, dattebayo, cuz' I'm Uzumaki Naruto!" Sasuke huffed and leaned back. He looked Naruto in the eye and tried to repel him like a magnet. If anything the blonde just drew in closer. 'Opposites attract,' Sasuke mused begrudgingly. "Eto, yanno I'm talkin' to ya, Teme!"

"I heard," Sasuke replied through gitted teeth. Naruto jabbed his finger right into Sasuke's sternum. It pinched.

"That all you have ta say?" Naruto growled. Sasuke sighed and let his shoulders drop from where they'd creeped up to his chin, turning away from Naruto to enter the fighting ring. Sasuke tried to keep his face blank as he heard Naruto's footfalls thump behind him. By the time he reached his starting point and turned back around, Naruto was also in position. Sasuke felt his heartbeat slow and his weight shift back onto his toes as he held out the hand seal for starting a spar. Naruto was baring his teeth at him, practically snarling. The whisker marks were twisted around his cheeks to shadow the dips under his unwavering pinprick eyes. He looked like Pazu about to rip out the throat of a stray dog. When Naruto placed his fingers against Sasuke's own, Sasuke locked his eyes on the ground a meter away from them. Naruto's fingers were very warm. Sasuke could almost feel his pulse. He glanced up just in time to spot Naruto watching their hands with a tiny pout.

Naruto drew back his fingers with a weird grimace and Sasuke returned his own arm to his side. He and Naruto were looking at each other again, up to the moment Iruka-sensei called for the match to begin.

* * *

Sasuke awoke to Pazu licking his forehead with her sand-paper tongue.

Groaning, he twisted his head so that his nose was crunched against the floorboards, but his neck was uncricked. Everything hurt. But mostly his eyes and privates. Also, he smelled really bad. Sasuke shuffled his elbows forward and leaned up onto them, prompting Pazu to whine at him.

"Vvvrhoooo" he crooned to her. She started purring again for a few seconds and then went back to crying, bumping her head against his. She had to be frantic with worry. Sasuke got himself up onto his forearms and knees, the numbness shaking away the more momentum he got. He blew his bangs out of his eyes and looked down at Pazu. She was sitting next to him on her hind legs, occasionally lifting her forepaws up off the ground so she could reach up and sniff at his face. Her ears kept swivling around, and her tail was much fluffier than usual. Yeah, Sasuke had scared her pretty bad.

Sasuke crawled forward until he reached the edge of the clean-patch of floor. It would be too dangerous to crawl through the rest of the workshop, and only slightly less dangerous to walk, but he didn't have much of a choice. Sasuke clutched the wall as he hoisted himself up onto his twitchy, shaking legs. Pazu, thankfully, kept out of his way instead of running between his legs and trying to balance on his knees like she usually did. Instead, she walked a few steps ahead of him, constantly looking back at him, as he followed her to the downstairs bathroom that had retained the only indoor walls on the ground level.

Once inside Sasuke lunged for the sink and used the rim shamelessly to hold himself up. Then, he turned on the faucet and stuck his entire face under the cold water. He drank like that for several long minutes, little sips intersperced with just letting the water flow over his eyes, rustling his eyebrows and dripping off of his right temple into the basin. The water felt so lovely on his sore face, and even lovelier on his sore throat.

Finally, Pazu cried at him loud enough to hear over the sink and he turned off the water to look down at her. She was sitting at his feet, staring at him. As soon as he looked down she started licking her tail. How polite.

Sasuke looked back up and caught sight of his reflection above the sink. The stranger in the looking-glass was gaping at him. Sasuke, apparently, had two black eyes, like he'd broken his nose except for the twin bloody sores at the inner corner of each eye. The eyes themselves looked…so weird. It took Sasuke a moment to even figure out why they looked strange it was so subtle. They were the same color, same shape, a bit bloodshot but that wasn't surprising. No, the biggest difference was that they were open wider than he'd usually hold them. They felt natural, like he'd just opened his eyes to their relaxed position, yet he looked more startled than attentive. Sasuke hoped that would fade, but given what he'd studied of chakra, electricity, and musculature he doubted it. His hair, too, was looking pretty interesting. Before this he'd known he had no hope of getting it to lay down in the back. Now, it had the same general setup of reasonable up front, disaster in the back, except the disaster in the back was apocalyptic. It looked like every lock of hair repelled every other lock, like they were all opposingly placed magnets. It gave his hair a weirdly floaty look. All in all, Sasuke looked like he'd been struck by lightning. Which was not so surprising, now that he thought of it.

Sasuke heaved a deep sigh and looked away from the mirror to the bathtub. He had a lot of cleaning up to do before he could eat and rest. No way was he leaving that puddle of urine out in his workshop overnight.

* * *

Sasuke woke up in his nest, with a hungry stomach and a hungry cat. He couldn't see her, not with his face smashed into a lump of fabric, but he could hear her. She sounded more like the Konoha alarm than a cat. Sasuke squirmed over onto his side and creaked one eye open. His face hurt, and opening his eyes made it so much worse, but everything was still clear. Pazu saw him waking up and stopped meowing, scampering off to the kitchen with her tail sticking straight up in the air.

Groaning, Sasuke pushed himself upright and tried to ignore the soreness all throughout his body. It was like he'd had a bad workout but worse.

Other than the pain, his morning routine went largely unchanged. He had four more days before he'd need to be back at the academy, and every one of those days would be needed to go through the post-experiment procedure. In other words, it was time to collect data. Peak efficiency could only be achieved after a rich, sustaining breakfast.

Sasuke's frying pan had it's own little hook over the kitchen window. The whole kitchen set-up was mere steps away from his nest, and steps away from that was the bathroom door. If his workshop was his sanctuary, then this nook was his home. Sasuke reached up and smoothed one finger over the rim of the old frying pan. A few months post-lantern he'd thrown all of his mother's cookware out the window. Then he'd gone outside and kicked all of it halfway across the compound. His 'goalpost' was the Uchiha Police Station. Then, he'd gone through every house on the way back and picked up anything that caught his eye. This frying pan had spoken to him. When he'd found it there'd been molded over egg crusted to the bottom. He'd only known it was eggs because the mold had gone after the yolks first, and it left rings within rings of fungus along the bottom of the pan. Sasuke had brought it home, scrubbed it clean, and now every morning he made himself whatever kinds of eggs he wanted. Today, the day after scrambling himself, he'd decided on fried. Because he'd fried himself. Sasuke scowled down at the frying pan. That pun had two very wonderful paths, and there was no good way to decide between them. Maybe he could make one egg fried and one egg scrambled?

Sasuke nudged Pazu out from in front of the fridge and yanked the door open. It took a few yanks. The door was temperamental these days, what with Sasuke having replaced the magnets with some of his own design. Inside Sasuke had a carton of eggs in the place of honor, at the front of the middle shelf. Just behind them was Pazu's scraps. Sasuke sighed, removing the carton with one hand, a handful of meat scraps with the other, and closing the fridge door with a quick kick backwards and he twirled around to set down his bounty on the counter. Pazu was already sitting next to the sink with her tail draped over the window ledge to flutter against the side of the house.

"Here," said Sasuke, throwing the scraps into the little dish by the windowsill. Pazu grumbled, already ducking her head down to the bowl before the meat even touched the porcelain. With her set, Sasuke took a peek out the window on his way past the sink over to the stove. Outside, the shrubbery and weeds were blooming. Sasuke smiled lightly at the thought of how furious everyone would be, to see dandelions and buttercups growing where there should be hedges and gardens. This time of year, Sasuke would have to make a dandelion salad, soon, before the plants started going down for autumn.

Sasuke took out two acorn-brown eggs, one in each hand they were so big, and cracked one each on either side of the rim. It had taken weeks for him to get good enough at it to crack both at the same time in just one smack. Sasuke carefully tipped the eggs both in, frowning as he realized he'd forgotten to grab the milk for scrambling one. Looked like he'd just have two fried eggs after all. The two eggs sizzling in the pan were a bit misshapen, a bit crispy around the edges even now, but the yolks were yellow and the white had neat little bubbles forming. Sasuke grabbed his spatula and nudged at the crispier one thoughtfully, quickly slipping the spatula underneath and sticking out his tongue a little as he shuffled it around in the pan while trying not to rip it. One of the edges got a bit stuck, but that was alright. Sasuke started on the other egg, poking the yolk tentatively with just the tip of the spatula.

By the time they were done, sunlight from the kitchen window was aimed just right to hit his nest and the desk table in front of it. The surface was covered in papers and used cups and pencils, so Sasuke swept aside the worst of it with one forearm, his plate balanced on the other arm so that he could hold his glass of orange juice. He set the glass, then the plate down and jumped over the table to flop belly-first into his fleecy, sun-warm nest. Sasuke got himself flipped around and grabbed his chopsticks up from his plate, called "Itadakimasu!" to Pazu, who was licking one paw to rub over her whiskers, and then picked up one whole fried egg and stuck the edge into his mouth. He ate the egg whole, bit by bit getting slurped up into his mouth as grease smeared over his chin. The egg tasted like warmth. It looked messy, and he ate it messily, but it was all the more delicious for it.

After breakfast, Sasuke dragged himself outside into the courtyard that served as one of his practice areas. It had used to be a mixture of things, from play area to festival ground to marketplace. Now it was just one more stretch of broken stones and grasses, flowers poking through the cracks they'd levered into the courtyard.

Sasuke took a quick glance around to ensure Pazu wasn't nearby. He also had a barrel of water from the ditch in case anything burned too violently. The closest house was barely withing range of a kunai, and half collapsed besides. The roof appeared to have been shattered open by the desperate ambition of a deciduous tree taken root in the floorboards. The little tree was barely taller than the roof it had hatched from. Sasuke was as safe as he was going to get.

Sasuke decided to start small. A simple bunshin. He went through the handseals meticulously, trying to feel his chakra through his fingers. It felt a bit off, ever since the experiment. Like it was already moving inside of him, constantly vibrating like energy rather than flowing like blood.

This was just a placebo effect, though, of his surgery. His chakra was fine. There was no other option. Sasuke must have an operational chakra system, because anything else would mean he'd failed. Sasuke took a deep breath and scrunched his eyes shut behind his goggles.

Sasuke released the jutsu and gasped. The tingling all up and down his arms and the flash of light beyond his eyelids caused him to snap his eyes open. There was no puff of smoke to be seen, no clones, not even any chakra. Rather, his fingertips were bursting with sharp, vibrant electricity, glowing sparks flying outwards like his skin repelled them. Then Sasuke screamed and jumped back, stroking his palms up and down his forearms. The lightning chakra, the dangerous chakra electricity that could only be safely expelled through the fingertips, was being generated and emitted all the way up to his elbows. And it didn't hurt at all.

This was going to be a long four days.

* * *

On day four, Sasuke jogged over to the front door and had to jump over Pazu on his way to the front door. He grabbed his bag, running a hand through his, thankfully, much calmed down hair. His eyes still looked blackened, but the red sores from the wires were mostly healed. He still looked startled, and he still looked like he'd been punched out twice, but at a shinobi school there was no way that'd be a big deal. His muscles didn't hurt so much now, and he wasn't generating static electricity whenever he touched metal anymore, so he had to be fine. He'd put on his hitai-ate this morning without even zapping himself. Besides, he'd put it off as long as he could. Today was team selection day. He couldn't skip no matter what was wrong with his chakra.


	4. Four Kotatsu

Kakashi sighed.

He'd thought Naruto's apartment was the worst of it. Minato-sensei's kid was living in a rathole in the red-light district, in a shoebox-sized ramen-cup dump. There wasn't a single vegetable in the whole place, unless you counted the mold growing on the ceiling. The bedsheets were smelly, every scrap of orange Naruto had lovingly curated was faded with grime, and nothing in the whole 'home' worked properly. He had seen nicer buildings up for demolition.

Now, he was in the Uchiha compound for the first time since Itachi went off the deep end and it was, if possible, even worse.

Walking through the gates, at first it looked like a typical ghost-town. There were empty houses, overgrown weeds, even the archetypal scrap of fabric blowing in the breeze. Then Kakashi nearly tripped over, of all things, a pile of cookware. Up against the backdoor of the police headquarters there was a beat up accumulation of pots, pans, spoons, even scraps of broken plate.

The visit did not improve from there.

Every house had been ransacked. Every. Last. One. The windows were either open or smashed, the doors were dangling off of their hinges. Oh, and also he could see plant and animal life inside through all of the gaping holes in the houses. This was no ghost-town, this place was inhabited by birds, squirrels, and feral cats. None of the damn things even had the good sense to run away from him. He'd gone his entire life before today without being glared at by a squirrel living inside of a kitchen cabinet. He could have gone longer.

There was…stuff. Just stuff, everywhere. In the bushes to his left a refrigerator was laying, ripped to shreds, across half the street. Down the street to his right a spool of yarn had been twined around everything remotely upright within his range of vision, including a bird bath, several mailboxes, a doorknob, a tree, and, most disturbingly, a hatstand half-buried into the dirt.

Kakashi found himself dragging his feet on his way to Sasuke's self-reported address. There was just so much to look at. If this was what the kid had done to the houses he hadn't grown up in, he was unable to imagine what he'd see at the inherited parental-murder-scene. He'd seen battlegrounds with fewer torn apart structures and bent kunai sticking out of walls.

One ten-minute walk later, the Uchiha Clan Head house loomed before Kakashi with all of the subtlety of an active flame. Ironic, considering the actual active fucking forge sticking out of the side of the house like some sort of gaping maw. Actually, as Kakashi edged closer, it looked less like there was an active flame and more like the forge was simply cooling down from a previous usage, putting out more steam than smoke. Small mercies.

Kakashi edged around the bloated lump of metal and crossed his fingers that the indoor-area would be better.

It was not.

Every single wall had been beaten out, manually from the looks of it. There were still bits of plaster sticking to the exposed support beams and pipes. It gave Kakashi a flawless view of the scrapheap that his genin-hopeful lived in. The entire open-floor-plan home was nothing but a winding series of pathways through hills of metal, interspersed with huge tables covered in strange winding loops of metal, wire, and glass. The patches of ceiling above each table were all scorched. Along with the floor beneath them. Oddly, and ominously, the tables were barely singed. Kakashi rubbed the bridge of his nose as he considered that, perhaps, some of the ransacked homes were missing their kitchen tables specifically in order to replace their burnt predecessors.

Kakashi yelped and jumped, sticking himself to the ceiling and clutching his calf. Below him, he glowered incredulously at a fluffy orange cat, hissing up at him with a bit of his pants stuck in its claws. This was the first time in two years that any living creature had gotten the drop on him.

Kakashi grit his teeth and walked across the ceiling to the most lived-in looking area. The kitchen was disturbing in its own way. There was only one place, so far as Kakashi had seen, in this entire compound that was clean, and lived in, and orderly. This kitchen was it. A rack of dishes was drying by the sink, near a bowl labeled "Pazu" that was next to the windowsill with bits of meat stuck to the bottom. The curtains were fresh and drawn back, showing an intact, and closed, window. There was even a door a step down from the refrigerator, an intact, closed door to a room. With walls. The only odd bit about the place was the fleece-lined box on the opposite side of the kitchen from the closed door. It was big enough to fit Kakashi, and the inside was stuffed with mis-matched blankets and pillows of some of the most disgusting colors Kakashi had ever seen, including orange brighter than anything in Naruto's apartment. On the outside, a series of flat wooden tables made up three walls and a floor, as well as a fifth desk in front of the whole contraption. Each table had an attached heating unit. The box was made up entirely of modified kotatsu. Kakashi was blindingly jealous.

Kakashi dropped himself down into the pile of fleece with barely a sound. It was even warmer and softer than it looked. From this seat Kakashi could read all of the papers strewn over the kotatsu-desk, as well as look down into the dozen or so mugs crusted with the remnants of, Kakashi sniffed, orange juice.

The paper highest up on the desk was, and this was new for Kakashi, math a bit too hard for him to decipher. The diagram was the only reason he didn't assume the paper was coded and call the Hokage. Whatever it was, he could recognize a circuit when he saw one. There was the input, the on/off switch, the wires, a series of measuring nodes, and something Kakashi couldn't decipher. There was some sort of circle that it seemed like all of the split pathways were meant to end up feeding into and monitoring, but it had no label, rather there was a tiny arrow pointing downwards to a diagram that definitely wasn't a circuit. It looked more like a plant's root system.

Kakashi lifted his hitai-ate and glimpsed over the desk with his sharingan. He'd need to review the equations later. He hadn't visited the Harunos yet, and he was already three hours late.

* * *

Sasuke got to the academy building five minutes early, which meant he was the only one there. As usual. He hated being late, and he hated walking into rooms full of people. Being so early added to his nerd image, but it also meant he could get a seat by the window every day.

Over the next twenty minutes, Sasuke sat quietly with his hands laced in front of his mouth, elbows on the table in front of him as his classmates trickled in. Haruno-san and Yamanaka-san were screaming and trying to get a seat next to him, presumably so that they could stare at him and laugh whenever he did something weird. They needed hobbies. Naruto was also there and making his own ruckus. Apparently, his classmates didn't think he'd graduated, which was stupid considering Naruto was wearing his hitai-ate proud and shiny on his forehead. Naruto was a better Shinobi than Haruno-san and Yamanaka-san put together, anyways.

Said blonde, agitated over something or other, suddenly jumped up onto the desk right in front of Sasuke. He crouched there like a frog, pouting at Sasuke with every whisker mark fluffing out from his pursed lips. His eyes were scrunched up, but the sliver visible was bright sky blue against his sunny-yellow hair. Sasuke lowered his hands from his mouth, feeling warm all over his face, as Naruto's eyes went wide and round and shiny, coming in so far closer that Sasuke felt enveloped by that sunlit sky. Then something bumped Sasuke's face and his whole body went warm and dizzy.

Naruto was kissing him. Those lips were touching his own and Sasuke was being kissed. Naruto's cheeks were brushing against his own, and the whiskers were rough against his face. His lips were so soft, and dry with a plush curve beneath his own, and they pulled in his own lower lip. Naruto's breath puffed against Sasuke's nose. Sasuke hadn't felt so close to someone in years. He felt like Naruto was tugging on something in his chest that had never been tugged on before. It was beautiful.

Sasuke's eyes had shut without him noticing, and he only blinked them open when Naruto pulled back. Sasuke felt faint, and he wanted to lean forward, rest his forehead against the only real-feeling thing in the world, except then Naruto looked back to him and Sasuke froze in his seat. Naruto was grimacing. He was sticking out his tongue. He was screaming and rubbing his mouth against his sleeve.

Sasuke threw his head against the desk in front of him, and his hitai-ate made a bell-clear clang against the wood. He grabbed his hood and yanked it over his entire head, so that he was entirely in the dark, and crossed his arms around the fabric so that nothing could pry it away without a fight. Sasuke wished he could still shunshin. If his chakra wasn't messed up, he'd be halfway to the compound by now.

Outside of his hoodie, Sasuke could hear Naruto screaming over the combined shouts of what sounded like every girl in the class. They must be teasing Naruto for what happened with Sasuke. Sasuke cringed deeper into his hoodie and wished that Naruto's screaming didn't make him want to stab whoever was causing it. As of today, he'd stab himself before defending Naruto Uzumaki.

Eventually, life outside the hoodie calmed down as Iruka-sensei started calling out team formations. Sasuke stayed buried as he waited for his name.

"Team Seven is…Naruto Uzumaki, Sakura Haruno, and Sasuke Uchiha."

To his right, he heard Naruto, and then Sakura, cheer. Sasuke twitched with each exclamation. Maybe he could just stay here in his hoodie forever.


	5. Five Fingers

The only people left in the room were himself, Naruto, and Haruno-san. Sasuke could hear them through his hoodie. Haruno-san had been sitting next to him ever since teams were announced, and Naruto was shuffling around out of Sasuke's sight.

"Ne, Sasuke-kun, I'm soooo excited to be on a team together!" Haruno-san cooed next to his head. Sasuke flinched down deeper into his hood. Haruno-san must be planning tons of fun new ways to torture him for the next however-long they were genin.

"Aw, Sakura-chan! Why d'ya care so much about the teme? I'm way cooler, yanno." Sasuke clenched his hands into fists inside of his sleeves and slowly moved his neck forward. The hem of his hood rose centimeter by centimeter until Sasuke could look out and see Naruto, who was scowling at him with crossed arms. "Eto, Teme what are you even doing?" Naruto uncrossed his arms and kind of crouched over, peering into the gap between hoodie and desk.

Sasuke sat upright. His hood draped over his head, leaving his face exposed so that Naruto would be able to appreciate the full glory of his death glare. Sasuke nailed him with his harshest pseudo-telepathic wish for Naruto to go away and leave him alone. Rather than immediately jumping out the window, Naruto took one look at him and started gaping unattractively.

"Teme," Naruto whispered before yelling at Sasuke from across the room, "what happened to your face? Did someone finally decide to punch you out?" Next to Sasuke, Haruno-san gasped.

"Sasuke-kun! Who did this? Who could have been strong enough to beat you?"

Sasuke glared at the both of them, but he could feel his lower lip was slipping outwards more and more into a childish pout. Naruto, meanwhile, rushed forward and slammed both his hands down on the desk in front of Sasuke. Sasuke jerked backwards reflexively. He did not want another kiss. Mutinously, he pulled one sleeve-covered hand up to cover his mouth and nose. Naruto was staring him in the eye, unerringly intense, as oblivious to the oddness and intimacy of his stare as always. Sasuke leaned back forward a little bit. Naruto was still scowling, but beneath his hitai-ate and bright sunshine bangs his eyes were crinkled soft around the edges. Sasuke flushed, suddenly reminded of how Naruto's whiskers felt against his cheeks. After a long moment, when Naruto and Haruno-san didn't react further, Sasuke shrugged his shoulders and looked away to the window.

"Damn it," Naruto growled, "I'm the only one that's allowed to beat up the Teme, dattebayo!" Naruto threw a punch into the air with his whole body. Sasuke was having less and less fun with this conversation the longer it lasted. He wanted to meet his sensei and go home.

"Didn't get beaten up, Usuratonkatchi," Sasuke mumbled from behind his sleeve. Naruto screwed up his face and huffed at him.

Sasuke kept his eyes out the window, and eventually Naruto wandered off. Haruno-san kept hovering and making inane comments about the weather, but Sasuke tuned her out with hard-won practice. Until, she started screeching.

"Naruto! You can't do that! You're gonna get us all in so much trouble, stop being so childish!" Naruto was putting an eraser up into the doorframe. If someone opened the door, the eraser would fall onto their head. Presumably, their sensei would open the door soon. "Tell him, Sasuke!"

"Hn," Sasuke grunted. He shook his head vigorously, crossing his arms over his chest. He couldn't see Haruno-san when he refused to look away from the window. Then, the hairs on the back of his neck prickled. Haruno-san was leaning towards him, and her movement rustled the fabric over his head.

"You know why he's so annoying?" Haruno-san said in an obnoxiously loud fake whisper. "Because he wasn't raised right. He didn't have a mother or father, no one to teach him right from wrong..."

Sasuke whipped his head around, looking at Haruno-san with wide eyes. She was looking at him with a cruel little smirk. Behind her Naruto was gaping at them, only to look down at the floor and rub the back of his head. Sasuke clenched his fists and felt his left eye twitching. He felt like he'd just shuffled across a carpet and licked a battery. Naruto looked like he wished he was anywhere else. Sasuke could relate.

"Alone..." Sasuke murmured, "Isolated... It's not about your parents scolding you. You have no idea what it means to be alone." Haruno-san's face fell, and she started wringing her hands together.

"Why are you saying that?" she whined. Sasuke growled and glanced over at Naruto. Naruto was looking at him like he was a test he hadn't studied for, or he was speaking a language he'd never heard. Sasuke hunched his shoulders and looked at Haruno-san's forehead so he wouldn't have to look at her eyes.

"Because you're annoying," he said. Loud and clear, so it would echo. Haruno-san's hand shook as she raised it to touch her own quickly flushing forehead. Her fingers were plucking at her swept-aside bangs. Sasuke gave up the ghost when her breath hitched. He pulled his hood down over his face and thumped back down onto his desk. He'd know when their sensei arrived. In the meantime, he was going to plan tonight's dinner in his head.

The next hour or three trickled by. Not for the first time Sasuke wished he could sleep anywhere like a Nara. Instead he laid inside his hoodie and tried not to notice the shuffling and nagging from outside his haven. Then, he heard the door open and a gentle thump from that direction, preceding Naruto bursting into joyous, helpless laughter.

Sasuke went still, but only momentarily before she shuffled forward yet again so that he had a gap inbetween the hood and the desk. Standing at the door was an extremely tall man with spiky gray hair and a mask covering all but one eyeball. He also was covered in chalk.

"Maa," said the tall gray-haired weirdo, "my first impression of you guys is…I hate you." The weird man looked them over and then caught Sasuke's eye beneath his hood. "Huh," he said, "Sasuke, pull back your hood." Sasuke twitched it back a few inches and glowered up at his rude probable-sensei. "Well well well," called the weird man, "what happened to your eyes?"

Sasuke shrugged. When the man raised his eyebrow, Sasuke sighed and pulled some words together. "Unexpected byproduct of a training procedure. It will heal. I will not be a burden to the team."

The weird sensei hummed and looked away. "Meet me on the roof in five minutes." Then, in a puff of smoke, the man vanished. Haruno-san and Naruto ran for the doorway. Sasuke pulled his arms through his sleeves and hugged his stomach inside of his zip-up. He slowly shoved his chair back and stood up, jogging over to the doorway with his sleeves flapping behind him. He didn't put his arms back into his sleeves until he reached the roof access door. He hovered behind it, rocking back and forth on his feet.

"Hurry up, Sasuke!" an adult male voice shouted from the other side of the door. "Quit standing there and get out here before I boot you from enlistment altogether." Sasuke jolted and pushed the door open. Outside in the sunshine, their sensei was sitting across from Naruto and Haruno-san, who were seated side by side on the ground facing their sensei. Sasuke hustled over and sat by Naruto on the opposite side of him from Haruno-san. "Well!" called their sensei, "now that we're all here, we may as well start with some introductions. Likes, dislikes, hobbies, dreams, the basics. Who wants to go first?"

The three of them sat silently. Sasuke was absolutely not willing to go first. "Ano," twittered Haruno-san, "how about you go first, sensei?" Sensei scratched his head.

"Maa, I guess I can…" he said, "well, I'm Kakashi Hatake…my likes and dislikes, hmm, when you're older…hobbies? Nothing much…dreams for the future…well, that's none of your business." Then Kakashi-sensei's visible eye curved upwards as if he was smiling. "Next up, how about…pinky!"

Haruno-san scowled, but quickly pasted a smile over it. "Well," she chirped, "I'm Sakura Haruno! The thing I like is…" she giggled and went red, her smile becoming very real as she looked over at Naruto and him. "The thing I dislike is…Ino-pig and Naruto-baka!" Suddenly, she was baring her teeth at Naruto and him. It was disturbing, and Sasuke drew his hands higher up into his sleeves and fingered one of his hidden kunai. "My hobbies are…" she was right back to giggling and staring. "And my dream for the future is.." and her nose started bleeding. How this girl managed to qualify as a kunoichi, he would never know. Maybe she'd held information under torture by giggling non-stop.

"Oookay," said Kakashi-sensei. His eye was squinting at Haruno-san. "Blondie, next?"

"Yosh!" yelled Naruto. "I'm Naruto Uzumaki, and I like ramen! My dislike is the three minutes it takes to heat up ramen! My hobby is…eating ramen! My dream is to become Hokage!" Sasuke took it back. Haruno-san was an amateur. Naruto was much better at withholding information.

"Maa," Kakashi-sensei's eye was drooping over at Naruto. His shoulders were twice as slumped as before. "Last one. Now."

"Hn," said Sasuke. Then he sat there for a long moment. Kakashi-sensei gestured at him, flapping his hand and leaning his chin onto his other palm. "Sasuke Uchiha. I like tomatoes. And magnets. And my cat, Pazu." Kakashi-sensei's eyebrow raised. Next to him, Naruto was gaping at him again, and Haruno-san was staring at him with a weird glint in her eyes. "I dislike fire. My hobbies are math and cooking." Naruto's eyebrows were almost to his hitai-ate. "My dream is…" Sasuke sat up straight and let his hood fall back slightly, "to see to the end of the Uchiha!" As soon as he said this, Kakashi-sensei's eye bulged and he twitched forward.

"Maa…what?" Shit. Sasuke had not intended to tell the truth. He was the worst Shinobi out of the four of them. Sasuke frowned and stared down at the ground. He shrugged and picked at his sleeves.

"Ne, Sasuke," Naruto called from next to him, "you have a cat?" Sasuke startled and looked up at Naruto. Like always, those big blue eyes latched onto his own. Sasuke nodded twice without breaking his gaze.

"Pazu," he repeated. Naruto beamed, whiskers flaring and eyes scrunched. He'd never smiled at Sasuke before. Sasuke's chest fluttered inside and he felt his eyes go wide and his cheeks go red. First, Naruto kisses him, and then he smiles at him like that? What was wrong with him? Naruto hated him. Sasuke scowled and twitched his head away. Kakashi-sensei was staring at him with a dopey, disturbed look on his face, like he'd gotten hit on the head with something much heavier than an eraser.

"Oh!" Haruno-san called, "I like cats too, Sasuke-kun! Maybe I could-"

"Anyways!" yelled Kakashi-sensei. "Let's not get ahead of ourselves. You're not genin yet, after all. You haven't passed my test."

"What?!" screamed Naruto and Haruno-san in concert. Sasuke just sat and tried not to bite off his own tongue.


	6. Six Threads

Two Years Ago

The tiny stone was greyish, and odd against the tan dust of the street. Sasuke kicked it along with his toes, one step at a time. He'd kick it, and a bit of dust would puff up under his foot, and the pebble would skitter forwards a few feet until it had rolled onto a relatively flat side and run out of momentum. This pebble, it was wobbly along the edges. Kunai, shuriken, when you threw them you always knew about where they were going to end up. This pebble, though, Sasuke was never quite sure. He'd spent his afternoon following it anyways.

The pebble clattered to a halt against a stone wall, and Sasuke looked up at the dead-end he'd reached. The empty road he'd followed was an alleyway of some sort, and here at the end was nothing but a dingy old shop. Right before Sasuke was a window display with two mannequins. One was in a sundress, and the other in some sort of tee-shirt with a fish printed on it. They were civilian clothes.

Sasuke looked back down to the pebble. It had come to a rest right in front of the shop's door. So, Sasuke walked inside.

The door shut behind him with the soft chime of a bell. Inside, the only light was coming from the window display. Sasuke frowned lightly, wondering how they could use sunlight if the adjacent building blocked any light for most of the day. At the counter, an old man was sleepily stitching together a pair of pants with reading glasses barely clinging to his nose. They slid down just a bit further every time his head bobbed and he shook himself back awake. When Sasuke took a step forward, the old man called out, "Welcome!" without looking up from his work, and then promptly burst into wet, helpless coughs. The old man was quick to hold his sewing away from his mouth, but this jostled his counter so harshly that the man's water glass tipped over onto the floor and spilled out over the carpet.

Sasuke jolted forward to the old man, yanking his exercise bottle from his thigh holster as he jogged. He popped it open and carefully folded the old man's free hand around it. The old man paused in his coughing long enough to take a sip, and then another, until he'd drunk enough to stop coughing altogether.

"Oh my," he said, "thank you, young man." The old man took the arm of his glasses between two shaking fingers and peered out at Sasuke from behind tiny, thick lenses. "Hmm. I best wash this for you, before you leave with it. Hateful thing, to pass your ills onto the one who helps you." Sasuke shook his head firmly and folded his hands behind his back.

"Keep it," Sasuke said. An old man working all day shouldn't be using a glass, it spilled much too easily.

"You're certain?" the old man asked. When Sasuke nodded, he looked Sasuke over with a raised eyebrow, frowning at his torso. "Ah, you seem stubborn. Well, I'm stubborn, too!" The old man chuckled and leaned over to his side, pulling out a black, hooded sweatshirt from the pile next to him. He held it up by the shoulders in front of Sasuke. "Yes, that'll do nicely. Autumn's setting in every day, and it'll rain soon. I can see it in the clouds." The man nodded decisively even as he started pulling at dangling threads at each hem of the sweatshirt and cutting them away with a tiny notch carved into his counter. When he finished, he threw the sweatshirt over to Sasuke, who caught it instinctively. It was huge. "That'll keep you warm, kiddo."

"I…" Sasuke stalled out and hugged the hoodie close. It was very soft. "How much?"

"Hmm," the old man scratched his chin. "I'd say, I'll trade that hoodie for one water bottle, how's that?"

Accepting this, it would be very improper. But, refusing would offend the old man, who was obviously very proud of his craft. Sasuke bit his lip for a moment, frowning, then came to a decision and smiled. He tugged the hoodie over his head and shuffled his arms through the sleeves. The inside was fuzzy, and warm, with little pockets down the sleeves and on the other side of the outer hand-warmer pocket. Sasuke sighed and tucked his chin down into the collar. The old man chuckled and took another sip from the water bottle when the chuckle nearly turned into a cough.

"There," said the old man with a toothless grin, "very handsome, very warm." The old man reached forward and tugged the hood up over Sasuke's head with brusque fingers, and then straightened the collar to rest evenly over Sasuke's sore shoulders.

Sasuke didn't return for two months. When he did, the store was empty, and the mannequins had been left laying in the window.

* * *

Sasuke awoke to the morning of the test, and knew immediately that today was going to be unpleasant.

Pazu was sitting at his bedside, meowing, but Sasuke just…wasn't getting up. His eyes were open, and he was looking around, and he could move and he wasn't tired or even particularly comfortable, and yet he was still just laying there. In his nest. Staring at the kitchen counter. Listening to Pazu. When he got up, he'd have to go to the bathroom, and brush his teeth, and make breakfast, and get dressed, and pack up, and leave the house…Sasuke sighed through his nose. It felt like a lot. He did it every day, and yet it still felt like a lot. How was he even supposed to get started? Which leg did he move first? What if he started walking to the kitchen and got stuck like this again, and he just ended up sitting there on the floor for hours until he died of dehydration?

Except, Pazu was meowing. She was hungry. Sasuke had to get up and feed her.

Sasuke sighed deeply. When that didn't work, he scrunched his eyes shut and loudly counted to ten in his head. On ten, he stayed laying down. He pinched his thigh. Then, he counted to ten again and this time, when he got to ten, he heaved himself upright. And the he sat there. Pazu yowled at him one last time and ran to the kitchen with her tail sticking straight up. Sasuke sighed, rolled himself sideways, and followed her.

The refrigerator had cherry tomatoes. Sasuke knew he could not eat only tomatoes for breakfast. Once, when he was newly alone, he'd stopped eating for a week because he was tired. He'd lost so much studying and training time, not just for those seven days, but for the next month. So, Sasuke made himself an egg and ate it with his tomatoes and a glass of milk.

And once he'd done that, he remembered the genin test with the new Team Seven.

Sasuke groaned deep in his throat and went to find his kunai holster.

* * *

Training Ground Seven was empty when Sasuke arrived, which was fine. Being by himself was fine. He'd brought some books on properties of metals to read because as long as he could work on his understanding of electromagnetism everything was fine. Sasuke was so fine that he sat down and leaned his back against the railings of the bridge so that he could be comfortable while reading.

Sasuke was on chapter three by the time Haruno-san arrived, and he immediately lifted his book to hide his face.

"Sasuke-kuuuun!" screamed Haruno-san. The girl skidded to a stop in front of him and Sasuke warily eyed her feet from under his book. She was maintaining her distance. For now. "Sasuke-kun, what are you reading?"

Sasuke shrugged and hoisted the book a bit higher, both to avoid her gaze and to show her the title.

"Hey, Sakura-chan!" came a shout from down the road. Naruto came tumbling over onto the bridge like he was afraid it was about to vanish if he didn't make it in time.

"Naruto! You're late!" Haruno-san whipped around to scream in Naruto's face, simultaneously throwing a very obvious punch at Naruto's head. Sasuke stayed where he was. It was such an obvious punch, Naruto was going to dodge instinctively.

Haruno-san's punch smashed into the side of Naruto's head and he fell to the ground with a smack.

Sasuke dropped his book and shot to his feet. Naruto was on the ground groaning while Haruno-san breathed heavily through her nose. As soon as Sasuke moved, Haruno-san spun on her heel to face him and smiled with her hands clasped under her chin.

"Naruto's so annoying, isn't he, Sasuke-kun?" Sasuke gaped at her and Haruno-san slowly wilted. Behind her, Naruto was sitting up and rubbing his head with a pout. He stopped when he looked up and met Sasuke's eyes.

"Teme, your eyes look…kinda weird? I dunno, you don't look right." Naruto went from rubbing his head to scratching it. "You look like you're super surprised dattebayo!"

Sasuke blinked and then flushed. They must have noticed, now that his black eyes were more yellowish, how his eyes had settled into a slightly wider resting state. Sasuke honestly kind of liked it. Before this week, he'd kind of looked like he was glaring all the time. His clan had always looked like they were angry, too.

"Yeah, yeah!" said Haruno-san, "Like, your eyes look more awake, kind of! You look really handsome, Sasuke-kun!" As soon as she finished speaking, Haruno-san slapped her hands over her mouth and flinched backwards. Naruto finally stood back up.

"Hey!" he yelled, "I'm way handso-handsomer than the Teme, Sakura-chan!" Haruno-san went for another punch and Sasuke didn't wait around this time. He jumped forward and grabbed her wrist. It stopped Haruno-san dead.

"Don't hit him."

Haruno-san's mouth was dangling open as she stared back at Sasuke. He slowly released her wrist and shoved his hands into the pocket of his hoodie.

"I-h- why? I'm sorry, Sasuke-kun, but, it's just Naru…to?" asked Haruno-san. Her eyes were watery. Naruto was behind her, watching Sasuke with clenched fists and wide blue eyes.

Sasuke looked over the two of them for a moment, and then sighed deeply and sat back down. He didn't know how to explain that hurting an ally was wrong. He didn't know how to explain that pain and hatred had destroyed better nin than them from the inside out. "Because it is cruel. We're Konoha Shinobi. When we hurt each other, we lose that."

Naruto made a soft wheezing noise and Sasuke looked up at him as the blonde's fists relaxed. Naruto was staring him in the eye, eyebrows scrunched inwards in what Sasuke could only guess was pain or confusion. Then, Naruto looked away and scrunched his eyes shut, gritting his teeth.

Eventually, Naruto and Haruno-san sat down, both sitting far away from him and each other.

The next three hours went so slowly Sasuke nearly finished his book. Naruto and Haruno-san didn't move much. Naruto paced around for a while, and Haruno-san played with her hair. It was during one of their still periods, though, that Kakashi-sensei finally arrived.

"Yo!" said the very tall man who was right behind Naruto with no warning whatsoever. Haruno-san and Naruto both screamed.

"You're late!" the two yelled in unison as soon as they'd stopped screeching. Sasuke put his book into one of his inner pockets and stood up.

"Maa, maa," said Kakashi-sensei, rubbing the back of his head and eye-smiling with one eye, "I got lost on the road of life. Anyways, I'm here now, right? So, follow me genin, and let's get started!" Kakashi-sensei started walking forward into a clearing in training ground seven and pulled out an orange book to read as he walked. It looked like it was called 'Icha Icha' something. Sasuke wondered if he could borrow it, if it was a textbook.

He, Naruto, and Haruno-san followed Kakashi-sensei to three posts sticking up out of the ground near a vaguely flat boulder. Onto the boulder he set an alarm clock. It looked a lot like some of the clocks Sasuke had taken apart back home.

"Ok, kiddos. The alarm will go off at noon. Whoever has a bell when the alarm goes off gets to be one of my genin and gets lunch! Whoever doesn't, gets tied to the pole and sent back to the academy, without lunch." Kakashi-sensei dangled two bells up into the air and tilted his head at them. He sounded like this was as fun for him as watching paint dry.

"What?" yelled Naruto, "but there's three of us! And I didn't eat breakfast!" Naruto's and Haruno-san's stomachs both gurgled loudly, and Sasuke guiltily looked away from the two.

"Ah, Sasuke, it seems as though someone went against my orders and ate breakfast this morning."

Sasuke jolted upright and looked Kakashi-sensei in the eye. "Hn. It was a recommendation, not an order." His stomach felt queasy in its own right as Kakashi-sensei leaned forward and glared deep into his eyes. Sasuke had the worst suspicion that his sensei could tell he had forgotten entirely about the suggestion.

"True." Kakashi-sensei abrupty straightened up and it was like the oppressive atmosphere had never existed. Sasuke let out a breath he hadn't known was stuck in his chest. "Maa, anyways, I only have two spots open. But that's your problem, not mine. Whoever wants a spot had best come at me with the intent to kill." With that, Kakashi-sensei tied the bells to his belt and stood straight. "Well? Begin!"

Sasuke vaulted into the trees. Kakashi-sensei was a jounin. He did not want to fight a jounin-level shinobi, especially without a single functional ninjutsu. He found himself a tiny nook in a tree off from the edge of the clearing and twisted himself around and in until his knees were tucked into his chest, his chin was tucked into his knees, and he could peer out from the gap between the branches he was settled between to watch Kakashi-sensei, who currently looked very distracted by Naruto who hadn't moved.

Naruto was shouting something, pointing at Kakashi-sensei, and Sasuke felt his blood run cold. The flat look in Kakashi-sensei's eye as he looked at Naruto was horribly familiar. And Naruto wasn't running. He was just standing there, guard down, and…

"The only thing that's 'off' here is your haircut!"

…insulting Kakashi-sensei. Sasuke felt himself start to shake and he clamped a hand over his mouth to keep from giving away his position. Then, Naruto did something he'd never imagined possible.

With a flawless set of hand-signs unlike anything he'd seen Naruto make before, practically ringing in the air with chakra, Naruto multiplied. Twenty orange Narutos puffed into existence, all growling at Kakashi-sensei for only a moment before as a group they rushed forward. It was absolute brilliance. Blunt, sure, but Kakashi-sensei was quickly forced into movement, kicking and ducking away from the clones. He was still reading his book, but he wasn't attacking the real Naruto, and that was what mattered. Naruto, with his strange, chakra-heavy offense, had effectively defended himself in an impossible situation.

Sasuke's shakes receded and he tucked himself further into his nook. He didn't have a plan yet like Naruto obviously did. He laced his fingers and tucked them over his mouth and watched Kakashi-sensei carefully for anything like an opening.

Nothing came for a long time, nor did any insight present itself to Sasuke. He could, maybe, use his ninja wire to distract Kakashi-sensei long enough to snag a bell? Except, that didn't feel right. Two thirds pass, except, Kakashi-sensei had told them yesterday that two-thirds fail…this felt wrong. The numbers didn't work, they didn't work at all. Sasuke frowned deeper into his fingers and watched the bells themselves. They looked like two normal bells. Idly, Sasuke pulled a sharp fiddly bit of metal out of his pocket, scrap from his workshop, and rolled it between his fingers. It cut his ring finger and Sasuke smiled. That ruled out genjutsu, and so long as he held onto the metal he'd know and break any genjutsu Kakashi-sensei tried to put on him. He'd studied breaking genjustsu a lot in the last few years.

"Konohagakure Secret Taijutsu Technique: One Thousand Years of Death!" Sasuke gasped and looked back up to the battlefield. A single Naruto was falling out of the air towards Kakashi-sensei who had his hands together in a fire-jutsu seal. Haruno-san screamed and Sasuke didn't need any more confirmation. Kakashi-sensei was about to kill Naruto, burn him alive. Sasuke had pushed off from the tree before he even knew he'd made his decision.

Sasuke launched towards Naruto with his arms out, the wind streaming through his ears. Instinctively, he'd pushed chakra into his legs trying to go even just a tiny bit faster. The crackling noise this produced worried him, but not nearly so much as the sadistic glee in Kakashi-sensei's eye or the terror in Naruto's bright blue eyes.

Naruto smashed into Sasuke's chest and beat all of the breath out of his chest in one fell swoop. The two rammed into the dirt to Kakashi-sensei's left in a heartbeat, and Sasuke threw himself over Naruto and clenched his eyes shut, waiting for the wave of heat that would surely accompany Kakashi-sensei's jutsu. Only, after several long moments, Sasuke inhaled shakily and realized the heat had not yet come.

Sasuke lifted his head inch by inch and found himself gazing upwards at Kakashi-sensei. His sensei had one hand outstretched towards him, but it seemed to have frozen in midair as soon as Sasuke looked up. Sasuke clenched his fist and felt blood pooling around his bit of scrap metal. Still no genjutsu, then.

"Teme! Get off!" Sasuke found himself rolling backwards as Naruto planted a foot into his stomach and launched him away. Sasuke hit the ground hard on his back with a shaky, gasping breath that was the only luxury he afforded himself before flipping backwards to roll upright and put up his arms into a basic taijutsu stance. Naruto was standing a few feet ahead of him, back to Kakashi-sensei, and again completely unprepared. Instead of running, or fighting, he was glaring at Sasuke with clenched fists and watery eyes. Kakashi-sensei, on the other hand, had relaxed and pulled his book back out.

"Sasuke," growled Naruto, actually growled, "why'd you do that? You…you were protecting me. Why the hell'd you do that?" Sasuke rapidly switched his gaze between Naruto and Kakashi-sensei, feeling more vulnerable than he had in years. At least, outside of his nightmares. His fist, the one with the scrap, was dripping blood on the ground from its ready position.

"Shut up, already!" Sasuke blurted. "I'm not a monster, I'm not like-" Sasuke inhaled once. Kakashi-sensei wasn't looking at his book. "I just…I had to. My goal would be impossible if you were hurt and I did nothing." At this, both Naruto and Kakashi looked confused and skeptical. Sasuke was so far done with this situation it was almost painful. He grunted and pulled a kunai out with his free hand. "Whatever!"

Sasuke launched himself at Kakashi-sensei head-on, with no strategy, no ninjutsu, and no hope of winning. He just didn't care anymore. He needed to become stronger, he needed to kill Itachi, and that would not happen if this obnoxious waste of a hitai-ate sent him back to kiddy-school!

Kakashi kicked out at Sasuke, once again ignoring him in favor of that orange book, and Sasuke's first kunai strike was effortlessly diverted. Sasuke ducked low and flung his other fist towards his sensei's stationary ankle. Kakashi-sensei just hopped over his punch with a gentle hum, and Sasuke grit his teeth and tried to take deep breaths.

"Well, Sasuke, your taijutsu seems adequate, for a pre-genin, at least. I think it's time to teach you the second school of shinobi arts: ninjutsu." Sasuke's heart sank. He was running out of options, and he'd not managed to get even close to landing a hit.

"Hey, look over there!" he screamed, pointing behind Kakashi-sensei. As his sensei deflated and stared at him incredulously, Sasuke bit his lip and reared his hand back to throw that little piece of scrap metal as best as he could. He had no idea how this would work.

The moment before the metal was to leave his hand, the moment his fingertips uncurled and the metal was touching only the flesh of his palm, Sasuke let all the the electricity simmering under his skin in place of chakra out into the metal shard.

Immediately, the metal launched itself at Sasuke's forehead and stuck fast to his suddenly very light hitai-ate. It made a tiny 'tink' noise, that was almost drowned out by the sound of lightning knocking down the tree next to himself and Kakashi-sensei and setting it on fire as it fell to crash across the clearing in a dividing line between them.

Sasuke and Kakashi-sensei stared down at the flaming tree. After a moment, Sasuke reached up and yanked on the piece of metal stuck to his forehead. It refused to come free until he gave it a tiny zap. When he pulled it away, all of the sharp edges had gone smooth and rounded. Sasuke felt really dizzy, by now. By the time he looked back up Kakashi-sensei was right in front of him, inches away and staring at him with one wide eye. Sasuke smiled a little as Kakashi-sensei got much, much taller and the world went black around him.


	7. Seven Coils

Sasuke's back was pressed flat against something solid and uncomfortable, yet he was upright. Gravity probably hadn't shifted, so he couldn't be laying on the floor like was usually how he ended up with this sort of neck pain. Also, it felt like his arms were tied to the solid thing. A bad sign, to say the least.

It took a throb of pain in his forehead to remind Sasuke that he'd knocked himself unconscious trying to use his chakra in the middle of his genin exam.

Not for the first time, Sasuke wistfully considered that so many of his problems could be avoided if he just went to sleep and never woke up.

Sasuke opened his eyes to the tall figure of Kakashi-sensei standing a few meters away with his arms crossed over his chest. He was looking at Sasuke, but he also continuously glanced away to glare at two somethings to Sasuke's left and right. Sasuke followed his gaze and saw Naruto to his right, glowering down at the ground with a more devastated look than Sasuke had seen on him since they'd both been barely more than toddlers. Haruno-san, to his left, was biting her lip and hugging herself around the stomach. She and Naruto each had an untouched bento lunch in front of them.

"Sasuke."

Sasuke jerked his head back forwards. Kakashi-sensei was barely an arms-length away. "YES!" he shouted, and his right arm jerked as he instinctively tried to salute his superior officer but got caught by the roped around his torso. He was tied to the failure pole, then. Kakashi-sensei was probably about to tell him he was going back to the academy. Sasuke bit the inside of his cheek and kept his chin up, even if he felt like he was going to cry.

"Maa," said Kakashi-sensei, drooping into a hunchbacked pout. "So formal…You and your teammates are getting a second chance at the exam. I've given them one piece of advice, but I don't feel like repeating it. They aren't allowed to feed you or untie you, so don't get any funny ideas. I'll be back after lunch." With that, Kakashi-sensei vanished in a puff of smoke and left a log in his place.

Sasuke's legs were splayed out in front of him, and he awkwardly shuffled against the ropes binding him to draw them up at the knee. It wasn't much protection, but it made him feel a little less exposed. The clearing he and his team were in was blindingly bright in the noon-time sun. Fresh green grasses and clovers grew all the way up to the edge of the treeline, and no sign showed of the damage done by their battles less than an hour ago. Sasuke sighed and looked away from the strange sanctuary around him. Naruto and Haruno-san were blatantly turned away from him and picking despondently at their bentos. He'd thought, before the massacre, that no one could really be sad on such a beautiful, sunny day. Of course, the Uchiha compound was often like this, honey-drenched with light and little plants. None of it ever stopped him from feeling sad in the moment. Over time, however, he liked to think that sunlight and greenery did help a little. If nothing else, nature and blue-skies were nicer than darkness and smoke for everyone, not just the sad.

The side of Naruto's face caught Sasuke's searching scans and held them. The sunlight made Naruto's blonde hair and blue eyes glow, and the grass drifting around his blue sandals looked like it had grown around him, cushioned him into a place he was meant to be sat. Naruto belonged in this world, reflected it in a way that was entrancing. Sasuke couldn't make himself look away. If Naruto caught him staring like this, it would be a disaster, but Sasuke had never been able to ignore Naruto Uzumaki, no matter what either of them was doing or feeling. So now he needed an excuse.

"What was Kakashi-sensei's advice?"

Naruto jumped in his seat and dropped his chopsticks into his bento with a clatter. "Ah!" he yelped. "Teme! Don't startle me dattebayo!" Sasuke frowned slightly and nodded impatiently. He wanted Naruto to get on with it! "Anyways, it wasn't anything you need to know, or whatever. So just leave it."

Sasuke's frown deepened. "No. Tell me." Sasuke heard Haruno-san shuffling, but oddly she did not interject.

"It doesn't hasn't got anything to do with you!" Naruto's fists were clenched, and he seemed to have given up on his lunch altogether.

"Let me decide that for myself, Naruto!" he demanded. He didn't understand why Naruto was being so annoying about this, but it was making something in his chest ache. Did Naruto not trust him, or something? He knew he hadn't talked much to Naruto but he'd never done anything, he thought, to deserve his hatred and disgust. If this was what their team was made of, two shinobi who hated the third, then Sasuke was doomed. His brother wouldn't even have to kill him. These two would finish the job. Sasuke noticed a cold sweat breaking out on his forehead, his breathing ominously speeding up as Naruto's silence went on.

"Fine!" Naruto finally yelled. "He said that those who break the rules are trash, but those who abandon their comrades are worse than trash! And you don't need to know that because you already tried to die to save my life. And I don't get why! I'm not part of any goal of yours or whatever, and we're rivals so what you did was stupid! I don't care if it makes you worse than trash, I don't ever want you to do something like that again, you get it?" Naruto was standing, now, directly in front of Sasuke and screaming in his face. His eyes looked purplish around the edges, and Sasuke was certain they hadn't looked like that yesterday. During the kiss. Between Naruto's words, his proximity, and Sasuke's thoughts about their kiss, he could feel the heat of a raging blush erupt over his cheeks. Even worse, he could feel his eyes watering.

"Oh," he whispered. To his horror a tear slipped out and rolled down his cheek. Naruto's anger vanished to be replaced by absolute terror. "I will." Sasuke cleared his throat. "I mean, I will risk myself to protect you if I have to. Again." Then, Sasuke frowned and tilted his head. "What do you mean we're rivals?"

Naruto's eyes were wide and his breathing was wild. Sasuke couldn't look away from his eyes, and Naruto didn't seem in any rush to look away either. "Wha'd'ya mean we're not rivals?" the blonde screeched. He threw both hands in the air and gesticulated violently as he went on. "I'm always trying to beat you and prove I'm a better shinobi, and you're always rubbing in my face how perfect you are! It's what we do-ttebayo! We hate each other!"

"I don't hate you!" Sasuke blurted. This entire conversation was so surreal it was difficult to keep up with. Honestly, this whole situation made him want to go home and crawl into his nest with Pazu. "Hate is a sickness," he whispered, hoping the wind would carry his words away so no one would have to hear them. "My goal is to resist hatred. To end hatred in our world. That's why I'm here." Sasuke's eyes had drifted down to his curled-up toes as he spoke. His tense feet had crushed some of the clovers and buttercups under his sandals. When he looked up, Naruto's fists had unclenched, and he was staring at Sasuke like they'd never met before. After a long moment of stillness, he sank down onto his knees before Sasuke, putting them at the same height.

"You…don't hate me." Even though it wasn't a question, Sasuke nodded anyway. "Okay." Naruto clenched one fist and stared down at it with an uncharacteristically serious face, a face Sasuke had never seen before on anyone. A face of pure determination. When Naruto took that fist and punched it forward, Sasuke didn't even twitch. "I'm not gonna be worse than trash! If you're going to protect me with your life, and never abandon a teammate or whatever, then so will I! I won't let you die, Sasuke! I'm gonna stay by your side and protect you just as good as you protect me. Then we can be great shinobi together and neither of us has to die! That's my new ninja way!"

An electric focus snapped into place in Sasuke's brain with an almost physical sensation. He'd always been fixated on Naruto, always watched him out of the corner of his eye, and now he was here. Eye to eye with him. Sasuke wanted to rip these bindings apart and reach for Naruto, grab his hands between his own and not let go. There was fear, bursting through Sasuke's thoughts in the form of visions of Naruto dying, Naruto under his brother's blade, Naruto bleeding out in front of him. But there was also warmth. Just like the kiss yesterday, Sasuke could feel that Naruto was close to him, feel it down to his bones. Sasuke wasn't alone. His fears slowly began to evaporate away, like raindrops in sunlight.

Sasuke realized he really was crying now. It was a light cry, more sniffling and a few dropped tears, but Naruto reacted like Sasuke was dying.

"Aah! Sasuke! I'm sorry! What's wrong? What do I do?" Naruto had leaned forward and was fluttering his hands around Sasuke like he was batting away invisible bugs. Even as he cried, Sasuke started to giggle. He couldn't believe this day! Everything was absurd about this, including him!

"Naruto!" snarled Haruno-san. "How dare you upset Sasuke-kun, you moron! I'm not going to be worse than trash twice in the same day! This is me protecting my lo- my comrade! Shannaro!" And then, Naruto was knocked away from him by a pink and red blur.

Sasuke watched incredulously as Naruto and Haruno-san tumbled over each other on the ground, punching each other and biting and – ouch – yanking on each other's hair. They were also screaming, mostly incoherently, but Sasuke did hear his name mentioned in both voices.

Sasuke wanted to go home now.

"This is not what I expected."

Kakashi-sensei reappeared in yet another puff of smoke, looming above Naruto and Haruno-san. With one hand each he hoisted them up by the backs of their shirts and held them apart from each other like they weighed as much as kittens. Naruto and Haruno-san only continued to swipe at each other for a few moments before going limp and glaring as one up at Kakashi-sensei. Sasuke had never seen them get along so well, before.

Kakashi-sensei sighed and walked back over to Sasuke with his baggage, then dumped Naruto and Haruno-san onto the ground in a tangle onto Sasuke's legs. Sasuke winced when Naruto shoved himself upright by planting his knee against Sasuke's thigh.

"You guys sure are great at making bold declarations you haven't even begun to live up to."

"Hey!" Naruto shouted and pointed dramatically at Kakashi-sensei. Sasuke incredulously noted that Naruto had shifted to be between him and Kakashi-sensei. "I don't ever go back on a promise dattebayo! I will never abandon Sasuke! We're teammates, now, and I'll protect him with my life, just like he'd do for me! If you try to hurt Sasuke again then I'll totally prove it!" Sasuke had a split second for his eyes to widen before Kakashi-sensei had thrown Naruto and Haruno-san away from him and had a kunai to his neck.

Sasuke was drowning. He was doomed, Kakashi-sensei was going to kill him, and there was nothing he could do. He could feel the air pressing in on him, just like that night, just like his brother…He couldn't even bring himself to scream against the cold steel cutting into his neck.

The pressure, both physical and chakra-based vanished as an orange blur collided with Kakashi-sensei. Naruto was howling like an animal, and Sasuke would have sworn that his eyes had gone red.

"You pass!"

Naruto stopped dead, crouched before Kakashi-sensei in a stance Sasuke hadn't seen him use before. Haruno-san also froze where she was readying a handful of shuriken aimed at Kakashi-sensei's head.

"What?" said Haruno-san in a squeak of a voice. Sasuke was sure his eyes were as bugged out as his teammates' were. Everything about Kakashi-sensei had shifted, all traces of a threat melting away into a reedy doof of a man.

"This exam, today, was all about teamwork. It's…not exactly how I expected this to go, but you've obviously got some sort of teamwork. Sort of. So, you pass. Report back here tomorrow at 8am, Team Seven." Kakashi-sensei's demeanor was one of forceful cheer. This was honestly creepier than when Sasuke thought he was going to murder him.

"Yay!" Haruno-san screamed. Naruto quickly joined in, and soon the two were cheering and waving their hands up in the air in triumph. Sasuke smiled, watching them leap about the clearing with joy.

"Oh, Sasuke, lemme untie you." Naruto skipped over and cut into his ropes with a kunai. Sasuke's binds fell away around him, leaving him free to stand and face Naruto. Without the ropes trapping him, he suddenly felt much more nervous to be standing so close to Naruto.

"Hn. Thanks," he said softly, lacing his hands together over his sternum. Naruto chuckled and rubbed the blonde hair at the back of his head. His smile was so wide his eyes were scrunched shut.

"Nah, nah, it's no problem, yanno. Like, I promised, dattebayo. So count on me, Sasuke!" Naruto's eyes opened and when he looked at Sasuke, the blonde blushed for reasons Sasuke could not begin to guess.

"Yeah. You too." Sasuke's smile wasn't fading, and the rush of victory flowing through him was the only explanation for what he said next. "Hn. Come to my home and I'll cook us dinner."

"Wah?!"


End file.
